Morgan Bakeweel’ 16 first opened up his lingering curiosity about the East Asia region to Professor Jingjing Lou and got an introduction to the field of comparative education via her course East Education Education, Society, and Culture. “I was obsessed with the field as a whole, but through my term papers I became most interested in the field of international higher education.”

In his post-Beloit stage, Morgan decided to get international experience in China. Required 2 years of postgraduate work experience to qualify for a work visa, the country also made it a special exception for those who majored in education to get working visas as teachers where Morgan became a classroom teacher at public schools in Nanjing to grades 1 and 3. Bridging the language and cultural obstacles, he managed a classroom of 56 rowdy kids by applying the education principles he learned in Education and Youth Studies Department (EDYS)’s courses at Beloit. One year later, Morgan slipped into an immigration grey-zone, working in international education consulting in Shanghai on a business visa. It was when he truly found his affinity for coaching motivated young adults to achieve their educational and career goals.

In the process of starting and running his own education consulting company, later on, Morgan got hands-on hiring and managing an international team of application coaches, which got him interested in human resources and management. Looking to combine interests in education and human resource management, Morgan started looking at the field of human resource development, particularly training and talent development in organizational contexts, which is also the program offered at Taiwan’s top university, National Taiwan Normal University’s Graduate Institute of International Human Resource Development. Getting Taiwanese government sponsoring 80% of tuition and comes with a living stipend provided by Taiwan’s Ministry of Education, Morgan started to pursue an MBA in International Human Resource Development from fall 2021.

Morgan features theoretical and practical issues that he learned at Beloit, including coursework and independent study on East Asian education, from EDYS, Professor Daniel Youd (Chinese language and culture), and Office of International Education prepared him not only for the joys and challenges of living and working in Taiwan and China but also for research and practice in learning facilitation as an applied, interdisciplinary social science. “I would be dying had Beloit not prepared me so well for academia. Four years of academic papers and my senior honors thesis have more than prepared me for the academic requirements of this program.”

Talking about his biggest takeaways from Beloit, Morgan shared his insight, “Not only was I able to learn what I wanted to learn, I learned how to be a self-directed learner. Ultimately, my Beloit experiences gave me self-efficacy that has driven all my accomplishments from my Beloit years to today.” He also left some tips to current Beloiters to take an active role in developing relationships with Beloit faculty and staff, to take an EDYS class even if you don’t intend to be an EDYS major where you will comprehend yourself thoroughly as a learner. Morgan Bakewell is happily open for connections with Beloit students who are interested in Taiwan scholarship opportunities via Linkedin.